University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.
THE VISIT TO THE HAUNTED HOUSE.

MY story now approaches a point in which I am soon to
meet and begin to feel the force of a train of circumstances
which ruled and shaped my whole life. That I had been hitherto
a somewhat exceptional child may perhaps have been made apparent
in the incidents I have narrated. I was not, in fact, in
the least like what an average healthy boy ought to be. My
brother Bill was exactly that, and nothing more. He was a
good, growing, well-limbed, comfortably disposed animal, reasonably
docile, and capable, under fair government, of being made to
go exactly in any paths his elders chose to mark out for him.

It had been settled, the night after my father's funeral, that
my Uncle Jacob was to have him for a farm-boy, to work in the
summer on the farm, and to pick up his education as he might at
the district school in the winter season; and thus my mother was
relieved of the burden of his support, and Aunt Lois of his superfluous
activity in our home department. To me the loss was a
small one; for except a very slight sympathy of souls in the matter
of fish-hooks and popguns, there was scarcely a single feeling
that we had in common. I had a perfect passion for books,
and he had a solid and well-pronounced horror of them, which
seems to belong to the nature of a growing boy. I could read, as
by a kind of preternatural instinct, as soon as I could walk; and
reading was with me at ten years a devouring passion. No matter
what the book was that was left in my vicinity, I read it as
by an irresistible fascination. To be sure, I preferred stories,
history, and lively narrative, where such material was to be had;
but the passion for reading was like hunger, — it must be fed, and,
in the absence of palatable food, preyed upon what it could find.
So it came to pass that theological tracts, treatises on agriculture,
old sermons, — anything, in short, that could be raked out of the

barrels and boxes in my grandfather's garret, — would hold me absorbed
in some shady nook of the house when I ought to have been
out playing as a proper boy should. I did not, of course, understand
the half of what I read, and miscalled the words to myself
in a way that would have been laughable had anybody heard me;
but the strange, unknown sounds stimulated vague and dreamy
images in my mind, which were continually seething, changing,
and interweaving, like fog-wreaths by moonlight, and formed a
phantasmagoria in which I took a quaint and solemn delight.

But there was one peculiarity of my childhood which I have
hesitated with an odd sort of reluctance to speak of, and yet
which so powerfully influenced and determined my life, and that
of all with whom I was connected, that it must find some place
here. I was, as I said, dreamy and imaginative, with a mind full
of vague yearnings. But beside that, through an extreme delicacy
of nervous organization, my childish steps were surrounded
by a species of vision or apparition so clear and distinct that I
often found great difficulty in discriminating between the forms of
real life and these shifting shapes, that had every appearance of
reality, except that they dissolved at the touch. All my favorite
haunts had their particular shapes and forms, which it afforded
me infinite amusement to watch in their varying movements.

Particularly at night, after I had gone to bed and the candle
was removed from my room, the whole atmosphere around my
bed seemed like that which Raphael has shadowed forth around
his Madonna San Sisto, — a palpitating crowd of faces and forms
changing in dim and gliding quietude. I have often wondered
whether any personal experience similar to mine suggested to the
artist this living background to his picture. For the most part,
these phantasms were agreeable to me, and filled me with a
dreamy delight. Sometimes distinct scenes or visions would rise
before my mind, in which I seemed to look far beyond the walls
of the house, and to see things passing wherein were several
actors. I remember one of these, which I saw very often, representing
a venerable old white-headed man playing on a violin.
He was always accompanied by a tall, majestic woman, dressed
in a strange, outlandish costume, in which I particularly remarked

a high fur cap of a peculiar form. As he played, the woman appeared
to dance in time to the music. Another scene which frequently
presented itself to my eyes was that of a green meadow
by the side of a lake of very calm water. From a grove on one
side of the lake would issue a miniature form of a woman clothed
in white, with a wide golden girdle around her waist, and long,
black hair hanging down to her middle, which she constantly
smoothed down with both her hands, with a gentle, rhythmical
movement, as she approached me. At a certain point of approach,
she always turned her back, and began a rapid retreat
into the grove; and invariably as she turned there appeared behind
her the image of a little misshapen dwarf, who pattered after
her with ridiculous movements which always made me laugh.
Night after night, during a certain year of my life, this pantomime
never failed to follow the extinguishment of the candle, and
it was to me a never-failing source of delight. One thing was
peculiar about these forms, — they appeared to cause a vibration
of the great central nerves of the body, as when a harp-string is
struck. So I could feel in myself the jar of the dwarf's pattering
feet, the soft, rhythmic movement of the little woman stroking
down her long hair, the vibrations of the violin, and the steps of
the dancing old woman. Nobody knew of this still and hidden
world of pleasure which was thus nightly open to me. My
mother used often to wonder, when, hours after she put me to
bed, she would find me lying perfectly quiet, with my eyes widely
and calmly open. Once or twice I undertook to tell her what
I saw, but was hushed up with, “Nonsense, child! there has n't
been anybody in the room; you should n't talk so.”

The one thing that was held above all things sacred and inviolable
in a child's education in those old Puritan days was to form
habits of truth. Every statement received an immediate and
unceremonious sifting, and anything that looked in the least like
a departure from actual verity was met with prompt and stringent
discouragement. When my mother repeated before Aunt
Lois some of my strange sayings, she was met with the downright
declaration: “That child will be an awful liar, Susy, if
you don't keep a strict lookout on him. Don't you let him tell
you any stories like that.”

So I early learned silence; but my own confidence in the reality
of my secondary world was not a whit diminished. Like
Galileo, who said, “It does move, nevertheless,” so I, when I once
had the candle out at night, snapped my fingers mentally at Aunt
Lois, and enjoyed my vision.

One peculiarity of these appearances was that certain of them
seemed like a sort of genii loci, — shapes belonging to certain
places. The apparition of the fairy woman with the golden girdle
only appeared in a certain room where I slept one year, and
which had across one of its corners a sort of closet called a buffet.
From this buffet the vision took its rise, and when my parents
moved to another house it never appeared again.

A similar event in my shadow-world had marked our coming
to my grandmother's to live. The old violin-player and his
wife had for a long time been my nightly entertainers; but the
first night after we were established in the apartment given up to
our use by Aunt Lois, I saw them enter as they usually did, seeming
to come right through the wall of the room. They, however,
surveyed the apartment with a sort of confused, discontented
movement, and seemed to talk to each other with their
backs to me; finally I heard the old woman say, “We can't stay
here,” and immediately I saw them passing through the wall of
the house. I saw after them as clearly as if the wall had dissolved
and given my eyes the vision of all out of doors. They
went to my grandfather's wood-pile and looked irresolutely round;
finally they mounted on the pile, and seemed to sink gradually
through it and disappear, and I never saw them afterwards.

But another of the companions of my solitude was more constant
to me. This was the form of a young boy of about my
own age, who for a year past had frequently come to me at night,
and seemed to look lovingly upon me, and with whom I used to
have a sort of social communion, without words, in a manner
which seemed to me far more perfect than human language. I
thought to him, and in return I received silent demonstrations of
sympathy and fellowship from him. I called him Harvey, and
used, as I lay looking in his face, mentally to tell him many things
about the books I read, the games I played, and the childish joys

and griefs I had; and in return he seemed to express affection
and sympathy by a strange communication, as lovers sometimes
talk to each other by distant glances.

Attendant on all these exceptional experiences, perhaps resulting
from them, was a peculiar manner of viewing the human
beings by whom I was surrounded. It is common now-a-days to
speak of the sphere or emanation that surrounds a person. To
my childish mind there was a vivid perception of something of
this nature with regard to every one whom I approached. There
were people for whom I had a violent and instinctive aversion,
whose presence in the room gave me a pain so positive that it
seemed almost physical, and others, again, to whom I was strongly
attracted, and whose presence near me filled me with agreeable
sensations, of which I could give no very definite account.
For this reason, I suppose, the judgments which different people
formed concerning me varied extremely. Miss Mehitable, for
example, by whom I was strongly attracted, thought me one of
the most amiable of boys; while my poor Aunt Lois was certain
I was one of the most trying children that ever were born.

My poor mother! I surely loved her, and yet her deficient
vital force, her continual sadness and discouragement, acted on
my nerves as a constant weight and distress, against which I
blindly and instinctively struggled; while Aunt Lois's very footstep
on the stair seemed to rouse every nerve of combativeness
in my little body into a state of bristling tension. I remember
that when I was about six or seven years old I had the scarlet-fever,
and Aunt Lois, who was a most rampant and energetic
sick-nurse, undertook to watch with me; but my cries and resistance
were so terrible that I was thought to be going deranged.
Finally the matter was adjusted by Sam Lawson's offering to
take the place, upon which I became perfectly tranquil, and resigned
myself into his hands with the greatest composure and
decorum. Sam was to me, during my childhood, a guide, philosopher,
and friend. The lazy, easy, indefinite atmosphere of
being that surrounded him was to me like the haze of Indian
summer over a landscape, and I delighted to bask in it. Nothing
about him was any more fixed than the wavering shadows

of clouds; he was a boundless world of narrative and dreamy
suggestion, tending to no point and having no end, and in it
I delighted. Sam, besides, had a partiality for all those haunts
in which I took pleasure. Near our house was the old town
burying-ground, where reposed the bones of generations of Indian
sachems, elders, pastors, and teachers, converted from the
wild forests, who, Christianized and churched, died in the faith,
and were gathered into Christian burial. On its green hillocks I
loved to sit and watch and dream long after sundown or moonrise,
and fancy I saw bands of wavering shapes, and hope that
some one out of the crowd might have a smile of recognition or
a spiritual word for me.

My mother and grandmother and Aunt Lois were horror-stricken
by such propensities, indicating neither more nor less
than indefinite coughs and colds, with early death in the rear;
and however much in the way a little boy always seemed in those
times in the active paths of his elders, yet it was still esteemed
a primary duty to keep him in the world. “Horace, what do
you go and sit in the graveyard for?” would my grandmother
say. “I should think you 'd be 'fraid something would 'pear to
you.”

“I want something to appear, grandmother.”

“Pshaw, pshaw! no, you don't. What do you want to be so
odd for? Don't you ever say such things.”

Sam, however, was willing to aid and abet me in strolling and
lounging anywhere and at any hour, and lent a willing ear to my
tales of what I saw, and had in his capacious wallet a pendent
story or a spiritual precedent for anything that I could mention.

On this night, after he had left me, I went to bed with my
mind full of the haunted house, and all that was to be hoped or
feared from its exploration. Whether this was the cause or not,
the result was that Harvey appeared nearer and more friendly
than ever; and he held by his hand another boy, whose figure
appeared to me like a faintly discerned form in a mist. Sometimes
the mist seemed to waver and part, and I caught indistinct
glimpses of bright yellow curls and clear blue eyes, and then
Harvey smiled and shook his head. When he began to disappear,

he said to me, “Good by”; and I felt an inward assurance
that he was about to leave me. I said my “Good by” aloud,
and stretched out my hands.

“Why, Horace, Horace!” said my mother, waking suddenly
at the sound of my voice, — “Horace, wake up; you 've been
dreaming.”

I had not even been asleep, but I did not tell her so, and turning
over, as I usually did when the curtain fell over my dream-land,
I was soon asleep. I was wide awake with the earliest
peep of dawn the next morning, and had finished dressing myself
before my mother awoke.

Ours was an early household, and the brisk tap of Aunt
Lois's footsteps, and the rattling of chairs and dishes in the
kitchen, showed that breakfast was in active preparation.

My grandfather's prediction with regard to my Uncle Eliakim
proved only too correct. The fact was, that the poor man lived
always in the whirl of a perfect Maelstrom of promises and engagements,
which were constantly converging towards every hour
of his unoccupied time. His old wagon and horse both felt
the effects of such incessant activity, and such deficient care and
attention as were consequent upon it, and were at all times in a
state of dilapidation. Therefore it was that the next morning
nine, ten, and eleven o'clock appeared, and no Uncle Eliakim.

Sam Lawson had for more than two hours been seated in an
expectant attitude on our doorstep; but as the sun shone warm,
and he had a large mug of cider between his hands, he appeared
to enjoy his mind with great equanimity.

Aunt Lois moved about the house with an air and manner of
sharp contempt, which exhibited itself even in the way she did
her household tasks. She put down plates as if she despised
them, and laid sticks of wood on the fire with defiant thumps, as
much as to say that she knew some things that had got to be in
time and place if others were not; but she spake no word.

Aunt Lois, as I have often said before, was a good Christian,
and held it her duty to govern her tongue. True, she said many
sharp and bitter things; but nobody but herself and her God
knew how many more she would have said had she not reined

herself up in conscientious silence. But never was there a woman
whose silence could express more contempt and displeasure
than hers. You could feel it in the air about you, though she
never said a word. You could feel it in the rustle of her dress,
in the tap of her heels over the floor, in the occasional flash of
her sharp, black eye. She was like a thunder-cloud whose quiet
is portentous, and from which you every moment expect a flash
or an explosion. This whole morning's excursion was contrary
to her mind and judgment, — an ill-advised, ill-judged, shiftless
proceeding, and being entered on in a way as shiftless.

“What time do you suppose it is, mother?” she at last said to
my grandmother, who was busy in her buttery.

“Massy, Lois! I dare n't look,” called out my grandmother,
who was apt to fall behindhand of her desires in the amount of
work she could bring to pass of a morning. “I don't want to
know.”

“Well, it 's eleven o'clock,” said Lois, relentlessly, “and no
signs of Uncle 'Liakim yet; and there 's Sam Lawson, I s'pose
he's going to spend the day on our doorstep.”

Sam Lawson looked after my Aunt Lois as she went out of
the kitchen. “Lordy massy, Horace, I would n't be so kind o'
unreconciled as she is all the time for nothin'. Now I might get
into a fluster 'cause I 'm kep' a waitin', but I don't. I think it 's
our duty to be willin' to wait quiet till things come round; this
'ere 's a world where things can't be driv', and folks must n't set
their heart on havin' everything come out jes' so, 'cause ef they
do they 'll allers be in a stew, like Hepsy and Miss Lois there.
Let 'em jest wait quiet, and things allers do come round in the
end as well or better 'n ef you worried.”

And as if to illustrate and justify this train of thought, Uncle
Eliakim's wagon at this moment came round the corner of the
street, driving at a distracted pace. The good man came with
such headlong speed and vivacity that his straw hat was taken
off by the breeze, and flew far behind him, and he shot up to our
door, as he usually did to that of the meeting-house, as if he
were going to drive straight in.

“Lordy massy, Mr. Sheril,” said Sam, “don't get out; I 'll

get your hat. Horace, you jest run aud pick it up; that 's a
good boy.”

I ran accordingly, but my uncle had sprung out as lively as an
autumn grasshopper. “I 've been through a sea of troubles this
morning,” he said. “I lent my waggin to Jake Marshall yesterday
afternoon, to take his wife a ride. I thought if Jake was a
mind to pay the poor woman any attention, I 'd help; but when
he brought it back last night, one of the bolts was broken, and
the harness gave out in two places.”

“Want to know?” said Sam, leisurely examining the establishment.
“I think the neighbors ought to subscribe to keep up
your team, Mr. Sheril, for it 's free to the hull on 'em.”

“And what thanks does he get?” said Aunt Lois, sharply.
“Well, Uncle 'Liakim, it 's almost dinner-time.”

“I know it, I know it, I know it, Lois. But there 's been a
lot o' things to do this morning. Just as I got the waggin mended
come Aunt Bathsheba Sawin's boy and put me in mind that I
promised to carry her corn to grind; and I had to stop and take
that round to mill; and then I remembered the pills that was to
go to Hannah Dexter —”

“I dare say, and forty more things like it,” said Aunt Lois.

“Well, jump in now,” said Uncle Fly; “we 'll be over and
back in no time.”

“You may as well put it off till after dinner now,” said Aunt
Lois.

“Could n't stop for that,” said Uncle 'Liakim; “my afternoon
is all full now. I 've got to be in twenty places before night.”
And away we rattled, while Aunt Lois stood looking after us
in silent, unutterable contempt.

“Stop! stop! stop! Whoa! whoa!” said Uncle 'Liakim,
drawing suddenly up. “There 's that plaster for Widdah Peters,
after all. I wonder if Lois would n't just run up with it.”
By this time he had turned the horse, who ran, with his usual
straightforward, blind directness, in a right line, against the
doorstep again.

“Well, what now?” said Aunt Lois, appearing at the door.

“Why, Lois, I 've just come back to tell you I forgot I promised

to carry Widdah Peters that plaster for lumbago; could n't
you just find time to run up there with it?”

“Well, give it to me,” said Aunt Lois, with sharp precision,
and an air of desperate patience.

“Yes, yes, I will,” said Uncle Fly, standing up and beginning
a rapid search into that series of pockets which form a distinguishing
mark of masculine habiliments, — searching with such
hurried zeal that he really seemed intent on tearing himself to
pieces. “Here 't is! — no, pshaw, pshaw! that 's my handkerchief!
O, here! — pshaw, pshaw! Why, where is it? Did n't
I put it in? — or did I — O, here it is in my vest-pocket; no,
though. Where a plague!” and Uncle Fly sprang from the
wagon and began his usual active round-and-round chase after
himself, slapping his pockets, now before and now behind, and
whirling like a dancing dervis, while Aunt Lois stood regarding
him with stony composure.

“If you could ever think where anything was, before you began
to talk about it, it would be an improvement,” she said.

“Well, fact is,” said Uncle Eliakim, “now I think of it, Mis'
Sheril made me change my coat just as I came out, and that 's
the whole on 't. You just run up, Lois, and tell Mis' Sheril to
send one of the boys down to Widdah Peters's with the plaster
she 'll find in the pocket, — right-hand side. Come now, get
up.”

These last words were addressed, not to Aunt Lois, but to the
horse, who, kept in rather a hungry and craving state by his master's
hurrying manner of life, had formed the habit of sedulously
improving every spare interval in catching at a mouthful of anything
to eat, and had been accordingly busy in cropping away a
fringe of very green grass that was growing up by the kitchen
doorstep, from which occupation he was remorselessly twitched
up and started on an impetuous canter.

“Wal, now I hope we 're fairly started,” said Sam Lawson;
“and, Mr. Sheril, you may as well, while you are about it, take
the right road as the wrong one, 'cause that 'ere saves time. It 's
pleasant enough anywhere, to be sure, to-day; but when a body 's
goin' to a place, a body likes to get there, as it were.”

“Well, well, well,” said Uncle Fly, “we 're on the right road,
ain't we?”

“Wal, so fur you be; but when you come out on the plains,
you must take the fust left-hand road that drives through the
woods, and you may jest as well know as much aforehand.”

“Much obliged to you,” said my uncle. “I reely had n't
thought particularly about the way.”

“S'pose not,” said Sam, composedly; “so it 's jest as well you
took me along. Lordy massy, there ain't a road nor a cart-path
round Oldtown that I hain't been over, time and time agin. I believe
I could get through any on 'em the darkest night that ever
was hatched. Jake Marshall and me has been Indianing round
these 'ere woods more times 'n you could count. It 's kind o'
pleasant, a nice bright day like this 'ere, to be a joggin' along in
the woods. Everything so sort o' still, ye know; and ye hear
the chestnuts a droppin', and the wa'nuts. Jake and me, last
fall, went up by Widdah Peters's one day, and shuck them trees,
and got nigh about a good bushel o' wa'nuts. I used to kind o'
like to crack 'em for the young uns, nights, last winter, when
Hepsy 'd let em sit up. Though she 's allers for drivin' on 'em
all off to bed, and makin' it kind o' solitary, Hepsy is.” And
Sam concluded the conjugal allusion with a deep sigh.

“Have you ever been into the grounds of the Dench house?”
said Uncle Fly.

“Wal, no, not reely; but Jake, he has; and ben into the
house too. There was a fellow named 'Biah Smith that used to
be a kind o' servant to the next family that come in after Lady
Frankland went out, and he took Jake all over it once when there
wa' n't nobody there. 'Biah, he said that when Sir Harry lived
there, there was one room that was always kept shet up, and
wa' n't never gone into, and in that 'ere room there was the long
red cloak, and the hat and sword, and all the clothes he hed
on when he was buried under the ruins in that 'ere earthquake.
They said that every year, when the day of the earthquake come
round, Sir Harry used to spend it a fastin' and prayin' in that
'ere room, all alone. 'Biah says that he had talked with a fellow
that was one of Sir Harry's body-servants, and he told him that

Sir Harry used to come out o' that 'ere room lookin' more like a
ghost than a live man, when he' d fasted and prayed for twenty-four
hours there. Nobody knows what might have 'peared to
him there.”

I wondered much in my own quiet way at this story, and marvelled
whether, in Sir Harry's long, penitential watchings, he had
seen the air of the room all tremulous with forms and faces such
as glided around me in my solitary hours.

“Naow, you see,” said Sam Lawson, “when the earthquake
come, Sir Harry, he was a driving with a court lady; and she,
poor soul, went into 'tarnity in a minit, — 'thout a minit to prepare.
And I 'spect there ain't no reason to s'pose but what
she was a poor, mis'able Roman Catholic. So her prospects
could n't have been noways encouragin'. And it must have
borne on Sir Harry's mind to think she should be took and
he spared, when he was a cuttin' up just in the way he was. I
should n't wonder but she should 'pear to him. You know they
say there is a woman in white walks them grounds, and 'Biah, he
says, as near as he can find out, it 's that 'ere particular chamber
as she allers goes to. 'Biah said he 'd seen her at the windows a
wringin' her hands and a cryin' fit to break her heart, poor soul.
Kind o' makes a body feel bad, 'cause, arter all, 't wa' n't her fault
she was born a Roman Catholic, — now was it?”

The peculiarity of my own mental history had this effect on
me from a child, that it wholly took away from me all dread of
the supernatural. A world of shadowy forms had always been
as much a part of my short earthly experience as the more solid
and tangible one of real people. I had just as quiet and natural
a feeling about one as the other. I had not the slightest doubt,
on hearing Sam's story, that the form of the white lady did tenant
those deserted apartments; and so far from feeling any chill
or dread in the idea, I felt only a sort of curiosity to make her
acquaintance.

Our way to the place wound through miles of dense forest.
Sir Harry had chosen it, as a retreat from the prying eyes and
slanderous tongues of the world, in a region of woodland solitude.
And as we trotted leisurely under the bright scarlet and

yellow boughs of the forest, Uncle Eliakim and Sam discoursed
of the traditions of the place we were going to.

“Who was it bought the place after Lady Frankland went to
England?” said Uncle Eliakim.

“Wal, I believe 't was let a spell. There was some French
folks hed it 'long through the war. I heerd tell that they was
pretty high people. I never could quite make out when they
went off; there was a good many stories round about it. I
did n't clearly make out how 't was, till Dench got it. Dench,
you know, got his money in a pretty peculiar way, ef all they
says 's true.”

“How 's that?” said my uncle.

“Wal, they do say he got the great carbuncle that was at the
bottom of Sepaug River. You 've heard about the great carbuncle,
I s'pose?”

“O, no! do pray tell me about it,” said I, interrupting with
fervor.

“Why, did n't you never hear 'bout that? want to know.
Wal, I 'll tell ye, then. I know all 'bout it. Jake Marshall, he
told me that Dench fust told him, and he got it from old Mother
Ketury, ye know, — a regelar old heathen Injun Ketury is, —
and folks do go so fur as to say that in the old times Ketury 'd
'a' ben took up for a witch, though I never see no harm in her
ways. Ef there be sperits, and we all know there is, what 's the
harm o' Ketury 's seein' on 'em?”

“Maybe she can't help seeing them,” suggested I.

“Jes' so, jes' so; that 'ere 's what I telled Jake when we 's a
talkin' it over, and he said he did n't like Dench's havin' so much
to do with old Ketury. But la, old Ketury could say the
Lord's Prayer in Injun, cause I 've heard her; though she
would n't say it when she did n't want to and she would say it
when she did, — jest as the fit took her. But lordy massy,
them wild Injuns, they ain't but jest half folks, they 're so kind
o' wild, and birchy and bushy as a body may say. Ef they
take religion at all, it 's got to be in their own way. Ef you get
the wild beast all out o' one on 'em, there don't somehow seem to
be enough left to make an ordinary smart man of, so much on

'em 's wild. Anyhow, Dench, he was thick with Ketury, and she
told him all about the gret carbuncle, and gin him directions
how to get it.”

“But I don't know what a great carbuncle is,” I interrupted.

“Lordy massy, boy, did n't you never read in your Bible
about the New Jerusalem, and the precious stones in the foundation,
that shone like the sun? Wal, the carbuncle was one on
'em.”

“Did it fall down out of heaven into the river?” said I.

“Mebbe,” said Sam. “At any rate Ketury, she told 'em
what they had to do to get it. They had to go out arter it jest
exactly at twelve o'clock at night, when the moon was full.
You was to fast all the day before, and go fastin', and say the
Lord's Prayer in Injun afore you went; and when you come to
where 't was, you was to dive after it. But there wa' n't to be a
word spoke; if there was, it went right off.”

“What did they have to say the prayer in Indian for?”
said I.

“Lordy massy, boy, I s'pose 't was 'cause 't was Indian sperits
kep' a watch over it. Any rate 't was considerable of a pull on
'em, 'cause Ketury, she had to teach 'em; and she wa' n't allers
in the sperit on 't. Sometimes she 's crosser 'n torment, Ketury
is. Dench, he gin her fust and last as much as ten dollars, — so
Jake says. However, they got all through with it, and then come
a moonlight night, and they went out. Jake says it was the
splendidest moonlight ye ever did see, — all jest as still, — only
the frogs and the turtles kind o' peepin'; and they did n't say a
word, and rowed out past the pint there, where the water 's ten
feet deep, and he looked down and see it a shinin' on the bottom
like a great star, making the waters all light like a lantern.
Dench, he dived for it, Jake said; and he saw him put his hand
right on it; and he was so tickled, you know, to see he 'd got it,
that he could n't help hollerin' right out, “There, you got it!”
and it was gone. Dench was mad enough to 'a' killed him;
'cause, when it goes that 'ere way, you can't see it agin for a year
and a day. But two or three years arter, all of a sudden,
Dench, he seemed to kind o' spruce up and have a deal o'

money to spend. He said an uncle had died and left it to him
in England; but Jake Marshall says you 'll never take him in
that 'ere way. He says he thinks it 's no better 'n witchcraft,
getting money that 'ere way. Ye see Jake was to have had half
if they 'd 'a' got it, and not gettin' nothin' kind o' sot him to
thinkin' on it in a moral pint o' view, ye know. — But, lordy
massy, where be we, Mr. Sheril? This 'ere 's the second or
third time we 've come round to this 'ere old dead chestnut.
We ain't makin' no progress.”

In fact there were many and crossing cart-paths through this
forest, which had been worn by different farmers of the vicinity
in going after their yearly supply of wood; and, notwithstanding
Sam's assertion of superior knowledge in these matters, we had,
in the negligent inattention of his narrative, become involved in
this labyrinth, and driven up and down, and back and forward, in
the wood, without seeming at all to advance upon our errand.

“Wal, I declare for 't, I never did see nothing beat it,” said
Sam. “We 've been goin' jest round and round for this hour or
more, and come out again at exactly the same place. I 've heerd
of places that 's kep' hid, and folks allers gets sort o' struck blind
and confused that undertakes to look 'em up. Wal, I don't say
I believe in sich stories, but this 'ere is curous. Why, I 'd 'a'
thought I could 'a' gone straight to it blindfolded, any day. Ef
Jake Marshall was here, he' d go straight to it.”

“Well, Sam,” said Uncle Eliakim, “it 's maybe because you and
me got so interested in telling stories that we 've missed the way.”

“That 'ere 's it, 'thout a doubt,” said Sam. “Now I 'll just
hush up, and kind o' concentrate my 'tention. I 'll just git out
and walk a spell, and take an observation.”

The result of this improved attention to the material facts of
the case was, that we soon fell into a road that seemed to wind
slowly up a tract of rising ground, and to disclose to our view,
through an interlacing of distant boughs, the western horizon,
toward which the sun was now sinking with long, level beams.
We had been such a time in our wanderings, that there seemed
a prospect of night setting in before we should be through with
our errand and ready to return.

“The house stan's on the top of a sort o' swell o' ground,” said
Sam; “and as nigh as I can make it out, it must be somewhere
about there.”

“There is a woman a little way before us,” said I; “why don't
you ask her?”

I saw very plainly in a turn of the road a woman whose face
was hidden by a bonnet, who stood as if waiting for us. It was
not the white woman of ghostly memory, but apparently a veritable
person in the every-day habiliments of common life, who
stood as if waiting for us.

“I don't see no woman,” said Sam; “where is she?”

I pointed with my finger, but as I did so the form melted away.
I remember distinctly the leaves of the trees back of it appearing
through it as through a gauze veil, and then it disappeared
entirely.

“There is n't any woman that I can see,” said Uncle Eliakim,
briskly. “The afternoon sun must have got into your eyes, boy.”

I had been so often severely checked and reproved for stating
what I saw, that I now determined to keep silence, whatever
might appear to me. At a little distance before us the road
forked, one path being steep and craggy, and the other easier of
ascent, and apparently going in much the same general direction.
A little in advance, in the more rugged path, stood the same female
form. Her face was hidden by a branch of a tree, but she
beckoned to us. “Take that path, Uncle 'Liakim,” said I; “it 's
the right one.”

“Lordy massy,” said Sam Lawson, “how in the world should
you know that? That 'ere is the shortest road to the Dench
house, and the other leads away from it.”

I kept silence as to my source of information, and still watched
the figure. As we passed it, I saw a beautiful face with a serene
and tender expression, and her hands were raised as if in blessing.
I looked back earnestly and she was gone.

A few moments after, we were in the grounds of the place, and
struck into what had formerly been the carriage way, though
now overgrown with weeds, and here and there with a jungle of
what was once well-kept ornamental shrubbery. A tree had been

uprooted by the late tempest, and blown down across the road,
and we had to make quite a little detour to avoid it.

“Now how are we to get into this house?” said Uncle Eliakim.
“No doubt it 's left fastened up.”

“Do you see that?” said Sam Lawson, who had been gazing
steadily upward at the chimneys of the house, with his eyes shaded
by one of his great hands. “Look at that smoke from the middle
chimbly.”

“There 's somebody in the house, to be sure,” said Uncle Eliakim;
“suppose we knock at the front door here?” — and with
great briskness, suiting the action to the word, he lifted the black
serpent knocker, and gave such a rat tat tat as must have roused
all the echoes of the old house, while Sam Lawson and I stood
by him, expectant, on the front steps.

Sam then seated himself composedly on a sort of bench which
was placed under the shadow of the porch, and awaited the result
with the contentment of a man of infinite leisure. Uncle Eliakim,
however, felt pressed for time, and therefore gave another
long and vehement rap. Very soon a chirping of childish voices
was heard behind the door, and a pattering of feet; there appeared
to be a sort of consultation.

“There they be now,” said Sam Lawson, “jest as I told you.”

“Please go round to the back door,” said a childish voice; “this
is locked, and I can't open it.”

We all immediately followed Sam Lawson, who took enormous
strides over the shrubbery, and soon I saw the vision of a curly-headed,
blue-eyed boy holding open the side door of the house.

I ran up to him. “Are you Harvey?” I said.

“No,” he answered; “my name is n't Harvey, it 's Harry; and
this is my sister Tina,” — and immediately a pair of dark eyes
looked out over his shoulder.

“Well, we 've come to take you to my grandmother's house,”
said I.

I don't know how it was, but I always spoke of our domestic
establishment under the style and title of the female ruler. It
was grandmother's house.

“I am glad of it,” said the boy, “for we have tried two or

three times to find our way to Oldtown, and got lost in the woods
and had to come back here again.”

Here the female partner in the concern stepped a little forward,
eager for her share in the conversation. “Do you know
old Sol?” she said.

“Lordy massy, I do,” said Sam Lawson, quite delighted at this
verification of the identity of the children. “Yes, I see him only
day afore yesterday, and he was 'quirin' arter you, and we thought
we 'd find you over in this 'ere house, 'cause I 'd seen smoke a
comin' out o' the chimblies. Had a putty good time in the old
house, I reckon. Ben all over it pretty much, hain't ye?”

“O yes,” said Tina; “and it 's such a strange old place, — a
great big house with ever so many rooms in it!”

“Wal, we 'll jest go over it, being as we 're here,” said Sam;
and into it we all went.

Now there was nothing in the world that little Miss Tina took
more native delight in than in playing the hostess. To entertain
was her dearest instinct, and she hastened with all speed to open
before us all in the old mansion that her own rummaging and investigating
talents had brought to light, chattering meanwhile
with the spirit of a bobolink.

“You don't know,” she said to Sam Lawson, “what a curious
little closet there is in here, with book-cases and drawers, and a
looking-glass in the door, with a curtain over it.”

“Want to know?” said Sam. “Wal, that 'ere does beat all.
It 's some of them old English folks's grandier, I s'pose.”

“And here 's a picture of such a beautiful lady, that always
looks at you, whichever way you go, — just see.”

“Lordy massy, so 't does. Wal, now, them drawers, mebbe,
have got curous things in 'em,” suggested Sam.

“O yes, but Harry never would let me look in them. I tried.
though, once, when Harry was gone; but, if you 'll believe me,
they 're all locked.”

“Want to know?” said Sam. “That 'ere 's a kind o' pity,
now.”

“Would you open them? You would n't, would you?” said
the little one, turning suddenly round and opening her great

wide eyes full on him. “Harry said the place was n't ours, and
it would n't be proper.”

“Wal, he 's a nice boy; quite right in him. Little folks
must n't touch things that ain't theirn,” said Sam, who was
strong on the moralities; though, after all, when all the rest had
left the apartment, I looked back and saw him giving a sly tweak
to the drawers of the cabinet on his own individual account.

“I was just a makin' sure, you know, that 't was all safe,” he
said, as he caught my eye, and saw that he was discovered.

Sam revelled and expatiated, however, in the information that
lay before him in the exploration of the house. No tourist with
Murray's guide-book in hand, and with travels to prepare for
publication, ever went more patiently through the doing of a
place. Not a door was left closed that could be opened; not a
passage unexplored. Sam's head came out dusty and cobwebby
between the beams of the ghostly old garret, where mouldy relics
of antique furniture were reposing, and disappeared into the
gloom of the spacious cellars, where the light was as darkness.
He found none of the marks of the traditional haunted room;
but he prolonged the search till there seemed a prospect that
poor Uncle Eliakim would have to get him away by physical
force, if we meant to get home in time for supper.

“Mr. Lawson, you don't seem to remember we have n't any
of us had a morsel of dinner, and the sun is actually going down.
The folks 'll be concerned about us. Come, let 's take the children
and be off.”

And so we mounted briskly into the wagon, and the old horse,
vividly impressed with the idea of barn and hay at the end of his
toils, seconded the vigorous exertions of Uncle Fly, and we rattled
and spun on our homeward career, and arrived at the farm-house
a little after moonrise.